There it was again, that feeling of having been skipped out on by someone I trust. Trusted, past tense. When had this begun, this sense of having a rug pulled out from under my feet? I drifted backwards in the pool of memories and landed in my one-and-a-half-year-old self, watching her as she made assumptions based on her limited experiences up to then, heard her thinking, felt her feeling angry. So angry. And ashamed, because she was angry with her mother, and that was a betrayal of her mother, wasn't it? So betrayal worked both ways in her. She was the betrayed, and the betrayer. I pop out of that memory fast, then shudder.

I can feel a misty fog descending my mountain of a brain. I feel myself start to shut down, go catatonic. I sense that someone is calling me to them, but am lost in the fog of fear. I can't move, my whole being is away. Somewhere else. Gone. I'm left in this shell which has no brain, has no heart, has no meaning. Do I go up? or down? Do I stay put? Is it safe here? or there? Can I even lift a foot to step?

I can feel myself hyperventilating and feel powerless to stop it. Then a rough hand grabs me and I'm tumbling. I hit and bounce. Hit and bounce. Head over heels. Back flips. Dives. Something tries to get my attention. What IS that? "Spread your wings." What? "Spread your wings." What wings? "Spread your wings."

So. I spread them, and I'm flying instead of tumbling. Or maybe soaring is more like what I'm doing with them. Soaring on a thermal spreadeagle. I feel like a parachute, open and catching air as I descend to a narrow valley. When I land, I keep my feet.

I am too soft, lumpish
of myself alone -
single -
Unpartnered, softness droops
it sags
it melts
without hardness rubbing it smooth.


I.
I need your carpentry -
the plane of your hard muscles,
the hammer of your broad hands,
the sandpaper of your chin
on my skin
to smooth me straight
to sharpen my angles
to repair my dents
to build me into my true shape.

II.
Take my lumpish metal into your forge
heat me until I burn through
mold my metal
into my true shape
Then plunge me into
your cooling waters
to steam me strong, unlumped
flowed, beauteous


Take my softness into the chalice of your Being
mix it with your hardness,
your directness,
in perfect measure.
Put me into the mold of your heart
and, with your love,
make an art of me.


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2015

I see your eyes shining full
watching me from the cave of your heart
the tholos of your soul
An untamed wind gusts through me
toppling my walls,
freeing my Siren howling
screeching into my shyness
eating it, killing me
Informing me, body and soul.
Untaming me.
Blazing me incandescent, confident.
I am yours.

I touch your raw manliness
feel its roughness, its smoothness
stir its rawness
prowl its borders, roaring.
I take the chalice of your hand
and cup my breast in it
Cup my *** with it
fill it with my heat
my wetness
my hallucinogenic wine.
Drink.
Eat.
You are mine.

I take you and blow winds
across the atlantic of your body
storm winds from the hot africa of my body
to flow up to the peninsula of your neck
to swirl and sinuate through your mind
to gather your thunder in them
to gather your lightning in them
to gather your hurricane in them
to gather your tectonic arousal in them
A continent-crashing
mountain-thrusting
breath-abating
heart-shatte­ring
tidal-surging
Storm
to carry us beyond our continents
beyond our seas
crash us into each other
into our Selves
into our untamed
raw
chaotic
surging
humid
muddy
slippery
Souls.

2/14/15
c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2015

You can not stop me - for long
I will overtop your weirs
I will bust through your walls
I will seek your lowest point
And
I will succeed (I will succeed)

You can not harness me
Unless I allow it
You can not outride me
Unless I allow it
I am the creative force
I am the unstoppable creative force
And I flow where I will
You can not outrun me
You can not retreat from me

I am
I am the power
I am the power that
I AM THE POWER
That powers you.


c. 2014
Roberta Compton Rainwater

myths say
the stars lactated from her *******
but I think
she wears a scarf of stars until nightfall
then
she pulls it from about her in voluptuous motion
and lets it fall
to puddle as it may
the stars in its net doubled on themselves
the way a chiffon scarf
looks, melted on the floor
or a river
turned back on itself

O Voluptuary!
make me the sky -
wind your cloth of stars about me now -
let me feel their antique heat on my back
let me feel their electric path
as they shoot across this human sky
let the hammock of your scarf cradle this solitary
in the nightness of your lights


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014


**Nuith (noot): Egyptian goddess of the night sky

I am the oasis I seek,
because Source is there
to quench my thirst and shade my brow.
I rest my weariness in Its bowering Love.
I renew myself in Its gentle breath.
The way before me no longer leads me into mental aridity, but
into soulful moistness and earthy imagination.
I and my Source are soulmates and lovers.

c. 2014
Roberta Compton Rainwater

pale herons huddle
along a bank of grasses
like whitecaps, abandoned

November in the wetland


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014

how trackless the poet's way
through the world of her heart
into known places following invisible paths
explorer with oft-held breath
exhalation serves to ground her
and open wide her eye
to discover that, despite abyssal
steps and flightless breath,
she knows her way full well.

I am come I am come
with wedding veil and cumerbund
to find a marriage in myself
and union with my Self

I am come I am come
like Eliot's poetpath revealed,
to find a Self I had forgot
yet always did I feel.


c. 2014
Roberta Compton Rainwater

When you look at me
Do I not have glory about me?
Am I not a shimmer of Light?
This is my body
This is my soul:
A flowing, shimmering,
glowing incandescence of passion
expressed in the sensuous lines of my body
An incandescence like none other
A fire within and without
Embering all of me
I spark all who approach
I spark all who stand away
My incandescence encompasses all who think of me
For I am a constellation of Light -
A galaxy nursing new Lights -
A womb incandescent with Light
I am thou and
You are me
We are sovereign and encompassing
Sing my Light on the throated cords of Love.

O, how my heart lifts
when songs echo from my core
in pathways little used or known
it leaves its footprint locked in stone
for me to follow when I may.......


c. 2014
Roberta Compton Rainwater

Am I not touchable?
Have I not breath
or song
or voice to speak?
Have I not eyes
to see your soul?

What matters this body?
Is it not full and sensual?
Does it not burst forth
from the soul
just as light beams from the eyes of God?
Has it not a duty
to be as graceful as an angel's wings?

This body matters
and is not all.
I am full and glorious of God
in my fullness.
Sing my praises
for I am the compostella
from which all dreams are born.

c. 2014
Roberta Compton Rainwater

* *Field of stars

She claims he moves the trees
every time he cuts the field,
expanding and changing the view from
the living room window.
The laws of Nature and
the roots of trees being what they are,
I know she really means
he's her Magic Man
and this farm is his crystal cave.
His familiar, a spark of a dog
they've named Missy,
roams in and out of
the magic of this place at will,
appearing and disappearing from one breath to the next.
The laws of Nature and
the nature of dogs being what they are,
I know that some dogs, and things,
are like that:
magical to the bone.


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014
to my sister

Old Neptune marks his boundaries today, leaves sargasso
and thin, bamboo-like reeds on the shore of Dauphin Island. He blows briskly, to urge his white steeds to the seashore.
The water is dark with disturbance, veined with foam like tatted lace. The scent of Neptune swallows the fast-moving air crossing
the island from Gulf to Bay sides. Oil rigs
haunt the horizon like boredom, breaking
the vista, reminding all who see them of human limit. Old Neptune accepts no limit, no boundary. We, who want fixity
as security, we watch as Neptune abuses boundaries, expands us
whether we want him to or not. There is no fixity; yet there is security. There is consolation in flow, in flowing with Great Neptune, rolling in his
tidal urgencies.


c. 2014/2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

where the dark night of the soul
                                                        ("ha­lf-seen on the edge of air")
                  meets
the dark soul of the night   which
                                                        ("f­rom the throat of cosmic vortices")
                  stands in
the charred ashes of surrender
                                                      (­"like a jack-lighted deer")
                   greeting.



c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014

moan  sordid  fiddle
drool music like blood
like
a lather  rusted  onto beauty
lick   scream   boil   smear
        whisper    iron  harshly


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014

I want Neptune
to come out
of the Gulf
reining
pale
untame
charioted waves
I want his imprint
on the brined wash
and
I want to ask him questions.
Do mermaids dance?
(for example)
Are hippocamps?
(for another)
Are starfish fallen celestials, antic?
Is drowning frantic?

I want the vasty deep to erupt
into answers, synaptic explosions
connections
connecting
to
me
I seek myself in saltwater
Creation's alphabet soup
to swallow me
to disconnect the disconnection of me.

Come Neptune. Come from my primal self
into my Self and connect me to me
and me to you and us to them.
Push your wild beasts from the sea
and come into me.


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014

with bark like alligator skin
the pines reach up up to the sky
eighty   one hundred   feet they fly their needles
as if to say
here we are O Wondrous One
take us
do with us as You will

little shake-tail squirrels chitter above me
as if to say   go away! this is our pine
you don't belong here!

I reply
I do belong here    the pines have told me so
I do belong here
the wildflowers have said so
and the creek has burbled its assent as well

I belong here   I repeat
I will stay here among the pines with alligatorskin bark
and the winds singing through the wood
and the creek seeking the sea
yes I will stay

and I will roll in the feeling of belonging like a dog rolls in herbage
and savor that I belong   I belong   here/now
at last


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater
2009/2014

coil, wind tendril
ancient
like light
through cloud shade
and
summer shine
pant the lazy beat
to moon rain's falling murmur
sing love to me
as I climb your windy shadow


*


yellow air flower
blow the languid wasp
away from the sun honey
beneath your bloom

it is a luscious drunk


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2009/2014

heart of day begins
cicadas rattle and thrum
the trees sing a song



in the frogs throat songs
I hear The Beloved speak
surrounded by night



c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2009/2014

On occasion, I send my thoughts
to rest awhile
in the small stand of bamboo
along my boundary
Its dappled interiors request
visits from my thoughts
so I send them at tea time
the better to be refreshed

On occasion, my thoughts return
in drunken heaps
to be sorted like laundry
into piles labeled
colors
shapes
and
revelations

On occasion, it's little use,
this sorting, for
they often end
in one pile again
as
poems
or
paintings
or
essays
or
as notes to friends


Roberta Compton Rainwater
c. 2009/2014

herbs new mown send green scent to me
an undertone of pepper - non-explosive -
marks this spot especially

a creole mixture to spice the morning walk

were I the chef of this walk
blandness would prevail
for blanding is safe
and requires no inspiration

I am learning recklessness and wantonness
it is in my eyes, should you peer into them
it is in my heart, should you sound it
it is in my being now and you can smell it on me
like the peppery scent in that spot there

I am become a creole recipe
delicious and warm
fulfilling and comfort to the traveler
in this landscape


Roberta Compton Rainwater
c. 2009/2014

long I dangled from
the rope of fear I wrought
I never looked down
I never looked down
until that day in the park
that day walking the dog
turning the day's events
over in my heart
cooking them over my heart's fire
for their nourishment

some small spark from the cooking fire
some small spark of courage
lent me by that fire
and encouraged by the wind
soughing through the trees
and the song of the cicadas
rattling and scratching the wind
some small spark of courage
let me look down at last
to see my feet but three inches
above
the Ground of My Being
above
the Ground of My Being
above
the Ground of My Being

there, near the cooking fire,
lay a knife
a knife to cut that rope
that rope of fear I'd wrought
and dangled with so long
and when I was done
I felt that Ground for the first time
the first time
the first time
in this existence


Roberta Compton Rainwater
c. 2009/2014